Sunday, June 5, 2011

June 3, 2011 Protest In Iraq’s Tahrir Square

Protests on Friday in Iraq’s Tahrir Square, Baghdad have become a weekly event. June 3, 2011 was no different. Iraqis gathered to express themselves over a variety of issues, one of the most important of which was the arrest of four organizers the previous Friday. Their detentions could be a harbinger of the future as demonstrators plan a new wave of events next week as the government’s deadline to improve its performance comes to an end, and the authorities seek to deter them.

On June 3, 500 Iraqis gathered in central Baghdad. The security forces were out in strength as well. That led to two small scuffles over equipment and a man attempting to film the event on his phone. As has been the norm, people expressed a wide variety of concerns. Condemnations of arbitrary arrests without warrants, torture, the lack of services, and high unemployment could all be heard. Others demanded that the government be dissolved and early elections be held, that U.S. forces withdraw before the December 31 deadline, that industries and the economy be improved, and that Iraq stand up to Kuwait over its Mubarak port and Iran and Turkey over water. One of the biggest issues however was the release of four organizers who were arrested during the previous Friday’s demonstration.

According to Human Rights Watch, the government had been targeting the protesters. Members of the security forces were asking about them in the two weeks before their arrests, and one of them was chased by unknown assailants on his way home 10 days before. The authorities knew about the four because they had been arrested in previous demonstrations.

After their arrest there was another raid against activists. On May 28, four humvees and two four-wheel drive vehicles pulled up outside the offices of the Where Are My Rights organization in Baghdad. At the time they were meeting with the February 25 Group to discuss how to gain the release of the four taken away on May 27. Soldiers from the 11th Army Division broke in, arrested eleven people, including the secretary-general of Where Are My Rights, and took phones, computers, and files. They were taken to the division’s headquarters where they were interrogated and beaten. Again, the government denied holding them, before releasing all of them in two separate batches.

All of these actions were likely meant to deter people from demonstrating when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s 100-day deadline for the government to improve its performance comes to an end the second week of June. That’s exactly what activists are planning on doing. One youth group told Radio Free Iraq that it didn’t believe anything would come from Maliki’s promises, and were going to hit the streets in the coming days. (1) A group of protest movements also held a meeting in Istanbul on June 4 to plan actions for the end of the 100 days. They said they were gathering in Turkey because of the wave of arrests by the security forces against their compatriots back in Iraq. They went on to state that they would hold protests on the Friday after the deadline ended, which was to be called the “Friday of Decision and Leaving.”

Protests in Iraq have died down as of late. When they first started in January, they quickly spread to every region of the country. Maliki responded with a carrot and stick approach consisting of pledges of reform mixed in with repressive measures and ample use of the security forces. That has led to the decline of demonstrations to the weekly ones in Tahrir Square, and a few more in cities scattered here and there. Organizers are now hoping that they can reignite the movement when the premier has to answer to the public about whether the ministries have improved any over the last 100 days. Whether that will happen or not is yet to be seen. Maliki has successfully repressed protests before, as he did in 2010. The underlying problems are still there however, so until the government becomes responsive to the public and develops the economy, there will always be a feeling of discontent throughout the country.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News, and I have been interviewed by Rudaw English. I was interviewed on CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com